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Panhandler rakes in $52,000 per year ....
Can you spare a grand? Happy Panhandler lives large
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If he's not Ottawa's wealthiest panhandler, he must be close to it, and yesterday, riding his bike as usual, his life's belongings hanging from the handlebars in two plastic bags, he got me again as I headed toward my car outside a west-end mall.
"Hey, Earl," he shouted. "Hey," I said.
"Remember me?"
"Uh. Yeah. Yeah."
"Mark."
"Right. Sure I remember you. Mark."
And I did remember him. The parking lot of a convenience store a few months ago. He came up behind me on his bike and he was soft-spoken, he was articulate, he was friendly, he was likable, he was not at all aggressive, and I gave the change I had in pocket without qualms. I remembered him from several weeks before that, too. Another parking lot, a different place, same approach, same outcome. Mark The Happy Panhandler. He gets around. You've probably seen him yourself. The bike and the bags are the giveaway. Mark Hewens, 47.
This time he didn't have to ask. Nor did he.
"You need money, Mark?"
"God bless you," he said.
I gave him what change I had in my pocket.
"God bless you," he said again.
"It's all I have," I told him.
"God bless you," he said a third time.
You'll notice I asked if he needed money. Wrong choice of a word. If The Happy Panhandler's to be believed -- and I believe him -- he doesn't need money. Let me put it another way. He shouldn't need money.
"Mark, how much do you average a week panhandling?"
"A week? About $1,000."
"Panhandling? You make about $1,000 a week panhandling? You're kidding me, right?"
He flashed me his remaining pearly yellows. "Nope. Sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more, but usually around that. A thousand a week. Fifty-two thousand a year."
No wonder he's always smiling and friendly, The Happy Panhandler. The perfect job. No income tax. No overhead. Works his own hours. Seven days a week. From dawn to midnight, cruising the city on his battered old bike. And, he says, the perilous economy hasn't touched him.
"How long have you been panhandling?"
"I had other jobs. I drove a taxi, worked in a restaurant. All kinds of jobs. Then about six years ago I saw guys panhandling and it seemed pretty good, so I thought I'd try it."
I asked what he does with his money. Bank accounts? Investments? He obviously doesn't spend it on clothes, dentistry, or better bikes. "Oh, I find ways," he said. Like what, I asked. "Oh, you know. Drinking. Other stuff." Drugs, I asked. "Pot now and then. Just pot." He said he lives on the streets except for four nights a week when he crashes in the small apartment of a buddy. "He's crippled, so I help him do things he can't."
No doubt one of the reasons The Happy Panhandler does so well financially is his nature. "It's all in how you approach people," he said. "I'm basically a nice person, how I am is me. I'm never aggressive. That turns people off. After all, it's their money, not mine. They don't have to give it to you.
"I always ask politely and I always say, 'Thank you, God bless you.' Lots of panhandlers don't say anything. That's rude. There are times I still don't get any money, or I'm told to (censored) off, and that's fine. I don't get mad, I'm still polite and say, 'God bless you.'
"One time a man told me to beat it and I said, 'God bless you sir -- by the way, your right rear tire is almost flat.' It actually was. He thanked me for pointing it out and then gave me some money. The thing is, I'm not a bad person. Some panhandlers give us a bad image."
I asked him what has been his single largest donation.
"At Christmas, outside the Lone Star restaurant, a guy got out of his car and gave me a $100 bill. I've had fifties, twenties."
Do the cops harass him?
"I haven't had any problems." He smiled. "Some of them have given me money."
I asked Mark Hewens, The Happy Panhandler, if he'd let me write about him, and he said yes, and I asked if he could meet me at the same place in two hours so a photographer could take his picture, and he said yes, and three hours later Andre Forget and I were still waiting, no Happy Panhandler.
"Maybe he's raking in big money somewhere," Forget said.
Maybe he was.
Maybe another happy, multi God bless you, day.
CONTACT MCRAE AT [email protected] OR LEAVE A MESSAGE AT 613-739-5133, EXT. 469. KEYWORDS=OTTAWA AND REGION
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